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Been playing plenty of games in PCSX2
ranging from Tekken 5 to Persona 4.
And they all work great at solid 60 FPS
except for these second-long intervals happening seemingly at random where the FPS would drop to around 55 and immediately go back up again. It's so brief that the music slowing down is the most noticeable part rather than the game itself slowing down. It seems to happen without any rhyme or reason as I can just be standing still in a game and the game will suddenly slow down for a brief second before picking up again.
My bet is that there is some service that's disagreeing with the emulator,
but before searching around I'd like to hear if you people are familiar with this kind of problem.

I've got a Dell XPS 15 with an
intel core i7 2670qm (2.2 GHZ, 3.1 GHZ with Turbo Boost) processor
and a NVidia GT 540m graphics card.
If you need any more information, I'll be happy to give.
Cause is surely Intel "SpeedStep" and/or Turbo Boost.

I desactivated AMD cool&Quiet on my motherboard and no problem since.

Otherwise, maybe tried of raise priority on PCSX2 via Task Manager.
its either one of the following problems:

1) overheating, that cpu is getting like 80c when played with pcsx2. not wise to play with it unless you are in a cold envoirment. << download realtemp and see what temps you are getting, plus look at the clockrates that are displayed there too.

2) intel speedstep, but if you activate the mtvu hack it is not a problem anymore because the processor is used more and speedstep will automatically not activate (correct me if im wrong here but that was the case for me atleast with the 2670qm)
(09-29-2012, 08:29 PM)AzazelDC Wrote: [ -> ]Cause is surely Intel "SpeedStep" and/or Turbo Boost.

I desactivated AMD cool&Quiet on my motherboard and no problem since.

Otherwise, maybe tried of raise priority on PCSX2 via Task Manager.
I did try deactivating Speedstep, but no dice.
I'll try raising the priority next time I play and see.

(09-30-2012, 12:29 AM)warWeeny Wrote: [ -> ]its either one of the following problems:

1) overheating, that cpu is getting like 80c when played with pcsx2. not wise to play with it unless you are in a cold envoirment. << download realtemp and see what temps you are getting, plus look at the clockrates that are displayed there too.
I see, I ruled out the possibility of it being overheating since it's like that from the moment I start playing plus I never had any instability after prolonged time of play. I do play in a cold environment but I do admit the surface I use is less than adequate. I'll give realtemp a try.

edit: temperatures generally ranged from 60-64 in the beginning, after a while it rose quite drastically and stayed at the low 70s.
clock rates ranged from 27300-2770-ish (I assume the numbers above the load is the clock rate?) in the beginning
and occasionally rose to 2800-ish after a while. Load stayed at around 12-13%.
Seeing how the numbers rose after a while does tell me that there are things to be done, I should find a more suitable surface,
I've been putting it off for too long anyways.
(09-30-2012, 04:30 PM)CrimsonMoonMist Wrote: [ -> ]I did try deactivating Speedstep, but no dice.
I'll try raising the priority next time I play and see.

I see, I ruled out the possibility of it being overheating since it's like that from the moment I start playing plus I never had any instability after prolonged time of play. I do play in a cold environment but I do admit the surface I use is less than adequate. I'll give realtemp a try.

edit: temperatures generally ranged from 60-64 in the beginning, after a while it rose quite drastically and stayed at the low 70s.
clock rates ranged from 27300-2770-ish (I assume the numbers above the load is the clock rate?) in the beginning
and occasionally rose to 2800-ish after a while. Load stayed at around 12-13%.
Seeing how the numbers rose after a while does tell me that there are things to be done, I should find a more suitable surface,
I've been putting it off for too long anyways.

hmm 2.77/2.8ghz is the usual speed it should give (actually yours is quite unstable, mine was at 2.8ghz constant with a fluctuation of 2790mhz)

tempratures are about right (quite cool even for that processor)

do you play it off your dvd or have you made iso's out of your games?
(09-30-2012, 05:25 PM)warWeeny Wrote: [ -> ]do you play it off your dvd or have you made iso's out of your games?
ISO.
I should note that Kingdom Hearts did not have this problem which led me to believe that my PC is simply not powerful enough to perfectly emulate games like Persona 4, but it's still a very odd way for it to show like this rather than with actual slowdown or choppiness,
and I've never heard of it before either.
It isn't really even a problem per-se since the FPS drop and accompanied jerkiness lasts for barely a second and isn't really enough to affect gameplay beyond the brief sound of the audio speeding up to catch up. But it does bug me to not know why.

Edit: played Kingdom Hearts 2 for about 3 hours straight today,
it didn't have this issue just like the first one and the temperatures never went above 64c all the way through.
So temperatures seem to be a non-issue. I'm starting to think this might be my PC's way of showing it's simply not powerful enough for perfect emulation regarding games like Persona 4 after all and I should just consider myself lucky the slowdown only comes around for barely a second now and then. Still, It's odd that I've never heard of this before.